… Mr. Kasich, joined by his wife and 15-year-old twin daughters, addressed several thousand cheering supporters inside the student union building at Ohio State University here, offering a centrist appeal designed to paint him as a common-sense Midwesterner who can fix a broken Washington. He avoided attacking President Obama, as his Republican rivals have done.

The event was a return of sorts: as an 18-year-old Ohio State freshman in 1970, Mr. Kasich wrote President Richard M. Nixon to plead, successfully, to visit the White House. But Mr. Kasich seemed determined to link himself to another Republican president, the conservative hero, Ronald Reagan, whose optimistic oratory he sought to evoke.

“The sun is rising and the sun is going to rise to the zenith again in America,” Mr. Kasich said at one point, recounting his advice to citizens of an Ohio community whose economy was devastated by job losses during the recession. He wrapped up his speech with another Reagan-esque declaration: “The light of a city on a hill cannot be hidden. America is that city and you are that light.”…

Mr. Kasich also spoke of “these two wonderful African-American fellows” he met at a Wendy’s restaurant who, he said, urged him to run. (Mr. Kasich won a quarter of the black vote when he won re-election in 2014.) He told them other candidates would have more money. “And they looked at me,’ “ he said, ‘and said, ‘But you got statistics.’”…

My vote for fishiest political anecdote of the week, even in this week full of Trump. But he is bipartisanly centrist, so No Labels (or whatever it’s called this season) is no doubt scouring the couch cushions for change to support yet more tv commercials in the NH media market. Kasich’s handlers say the NH primary is “key” for him, since or because John “Prolapsed Pig Rectum” Sununu‘s in charge of his campaign there.

Apart from those commercials, that’s the most attention Kasich is liable to draw for the next many months, barring his notoriously “jerk”-ish temperament giving the lamestream media clickbait. Ed Kilgore, at the Washington Monthly, is optimistic:

… Ohio Governor John Kasich… has an anger management problem. He’s forever popping off at friends, enemies, constituents, media, you name it, to the point where the famously volatile John McCain has described him as having “a hair-trigger temper.”

You can imagine that this could be a problem in a presidential campaign, particularly one that begins with an insane two-week sprint to do well enough in national polls to make a cutoff for a debate in your own state, at a moment when Donald Trump, people attacking Donald Trump, and people yapping about foreign policy (not exactly Kasich’s forte) are soaking up 98% of the media attention. It’s enough to make you snap, crackle and pop…

Steve M digs up an interesting fact from the recent WaPo-ABC poll in which Trump leads the Republican field by eleven points: Trump polls at 32% among voters with no college degree, and only 8% among voters with a college degree.

That’s quite a split. It’s worth noting that Republicans who consider themselves Tea Party members are more likelyto have gone to college than other Republicans.

https://www.balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/balloon_juice_header_logo_grey.jpg00DougJhttps://www.balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/balloon_juice_header_logo_grey.jpgDougJ2015-07-21 09:36:262015-07-21 09:37:13Spent four years prostrate to the higher mind

The Freedom to Marry group is going out of business for the best possible reason: They won the fight. The group put together this celebratory video that might result in dust stimulating your tear ducts:

Guess Little Prince Rand is missing the attention of his Trump-curious bros. Because, seriously, from the Washington Post:

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is working on legislation to allow soldiers to carry guns on military bases, and could introduce it as soon as this week. That could establish him as a leader among conservatives who say last week’s massacre at a Chattanooga, Tennessee recruiting station should change how the military looks at the issue…

Paul’s commitment to gun rights has a stronger pedigree than Trump’s. He is closely tied to the National Association for Gun Rights, a group that positions itself to the right of the NRA.

“I think guns are a great deterrent anyway,” Paul said on Monday. “I’ve also had bills, for a couple of years now, making it easier to arm pilots. “

In the wake of Chattanooga, Paul has also criticized immigration laws, asking whether they are letting anti-American elements into the country. “I’m very concerned about immigration to this country from countries that have hotbeds of jihadism and hotbeds of this Islamism,” he told Breitbart News reporter Matthew Boyle last week. Paul expanded on those comments Monday, recalling how he had wanted “Rubio’s legislation” – i.e., the stillborn 2013 immigration reform bill – to add screening for potential terrorists.

“We wrote a letter to Harry Reid, saying we should slow the bill down, and have a discussion about putting the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System in,” said Paul. “It gave extra scrutiny to countries that had radical elements that were professing a desire to harm Americans or America. I don’t think it has to say one religion or not, but I think you find out that most of the anti-American movements around the country do seem to be coming from predominately Islamic countries.”…

Guess it’s not pandering if he really believes that being scared of the correct “radical elements” is more important than eliminating redundant and worthless government paperwork, right, men?